BAPTISM
"IF any man is in Christ,
he is a new creation" (2 Cor. 5: 17). One fact alone is sufficient to destroy for
ever the dream that the new birth is the result of baptism, as the
official words are repeated over the baby, "This
child, which is now regenerate." The leading Anglican organ, The
Guardian, gives (Dec. 29, 1944) the figures reported by a joint Committee
of Canterbury and York. Statistics, says
the report, reveal that, "while 67 per cent. of all children born in
A Rite
The
most profound word on baptism ever uttered defines beyond all possible
challenge who are to be baptized, the exact form of
the ritual, and the spiritual truth which the rite is made to picture. But before examining it we do well to ponder
carefully what a rite, or ritual ceremony, exactly is. A rite is a spiritual truth pictured by
things which can be seen and felt, so preserving the truth, visibly, for ever.
The broken loaf is the broken body of Christ,
and the wine poured out is His outpoured blood, both absorbed by the believer -
crucified Christ appropriated for ever. Therefore
a mutilated rite is a ruined truth; for
the ritual is an exact picture of the spiritual truth which it shows to all who
see it.
The Baptized
Now
we first learn who are to be baptized. "Are ye ignorant" for we may never have
mastered the meaning of a ritual which we have sincerely and rightly undergone
"that all we who have been baptized into Christ
Jesus" - for even in Paul's day there were Christians who had
not obeyed the command - "were baptized into
his death?" (Rom. 6: 3). This is critically important for all who
honestly desire to know God's mind on baptism. Four times in this passage the baptized are
defined as those who have shared Christ's death; who, having been crucified
with Him, have been laid in His tomb; souls now walking in newness of life. "He that hath
died is justified from sin." Paul adds (verse 11):- "Even
so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus." In the ever memorable words of George
Muller:- "There was a day when I died, died
utterly; died to George Muller, his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will - died to the
world, its approval or censure - died to approval or censure even of my
brethren and friends - and since then I have studied to live unto God."
A Funeral
But,
while it is only the dead in Christ that are to be baptized, the death is not
the baptism. A funeral must follow death,
and it is baptism which is the funeral.
"They that
are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the
passions and the lusts thereof
" (Gal. 5 : 24): so Paul now says,- "We
were BURIED therefore with him through baptism into death":
baptism is a public funeral with the Lord. So the baptistry
shines forth in its marvellous symbolism: a trench dug in the earth for a dead
man, laid on his back as a corpse; by other hands, for no man can baptize
himself any more than he can bury himself: the body placed under the judgment
flood, a picture so close to reality that if the baptized were kept
under the judgment flood for five minutes, he would be a corpse.*
[*Immersion
is practised even in the Arctic regions. One who had been his church's baptizer for
many years told the writer that he had baptized not less than 2,000 with his
own hands, and had never known any ill effects, bodily. "John was
baptizing near Aenon, because there was much
water there" (John 3:
23). A tumbler-full would be
enough for the sprinkling of either babies or men.]
"The world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the
world" (Gal. 6: 14);
baptism is the public funeral, closing every vista of worldly glory, and
opening the narrow avenue that leads to the [millennial*] Kingdom. "Of all revealed
truths, not one is more clearly revealed in the Scriptures than [regenerate] believer's baptism - not even the doctrine of
justification by faith; and the subject has only become obscured by men not
having been willing to take the Scriptures alone to decide
the point" (George Muller).
[* It is
the
Immersion
Thus
the form of the ritual is placed beyond all challenge. Even a great Anglican Bishop, the beloved Dr.
Handley Moule, translates the passage thus:- "We are entombed therefore
with Him, by means of our baptism, into His death"; and he adds,-
"As to the 'Plunge,' and 'emergence,' baptism was
at first, theoretically, an entire immersion." It has rarely been denied. "All
commentators of note (except Stuart and Hodge) expressly admit or take it for
granted that the ancient prevalent mode of baptism by immersion and emersion is
here implied" (Lange). Therefore
the sprinkling of 'holy water' on an infant's
brow is not baptism in any sense or form: the infant is neither spiritually
buried nor spiritually risen with Christ; and thus the truth for which the rite stands is totally destroyed.*
[* The wish to bring the family to Christ, and to
dedicate each infant, is a noble motive; but to confound it with the ritual of
the born again - and, still worse, to make it the cause of re-birth - is a
blunder as obvious as it is grave. Nor is baptism given as the badge of a sect:
we are nowhere told to refuse fellowship to the un-baptized [regenerate] believer.]
Resurrection
But
baptism embodies much more than a funeral. "Having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were
also raised with him" (Col. 2: 12). But it is
more even than resurrection. "We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death;
that like as Christ was raised from the dead, so we also" -
ascending out of an open grave, and abandoning the moth-eaten garments of a
buried life - "should walk" - for we are corpses no more - "in NEWNESS OF LIFE." The hard, deep, black trench which God draws
between the Church and the world, is the baptismal
grave which drowns the old life, and smothers and suffocates all the past; and
we rise out of the tomb, typically washed, to walk with God.
The Type
The
New Testament ritual is wonderfully confirmed by its Old Testament type. "Unto him that loveth
us, and washed us from our sins" - total immersion in
the baptismal bath - "and made us to be PRIESTS unto his
God and Father" (Rev. 1: 5).
The ancient priests underwent a similar
ritual. At the entrance of the
Tabernacle was the altar of burnt offering: at the far opposite end was the Holy
Curtain behind which was God: lying exactly mid-way between was the Laver, or
brazen sea of water. So when the priests
were consecrated, and before they could act as priests, Moses presented them to
the people at the altar of burnt offering - atonement: then as the first act,
when they crossed the threshold as priests, they washed in the laver of water; and so, emerging, reached the
immediate presence of Diety - to walk with God.*
[*The
priests were bathed both in hands and feet (Ex. 30:
19): so to-day the additional rite of feet-washing (John 13: 15) completes the ritual cleansing.]
The Kingdom
The
Holy Spirit lets drop a warning and an incentive very valuable to an ear
sensitive enough to hear. "For if we become united with him in the likeness of his death"
- that is, baptism, the ritual photograph - "we
shall be also" - 'shall be,' at a future date; 'also,'
that is, correspondingly - "of his resurrection"
- that is, the First.* The sentence would appear to
make baptism part of the fidelity which wins the Kingdom. So our Lord says,-
"Except a man be born again, he cannot see
the
[*
"Not in the likeness of His resurrection but in the fact:
the Lord’s resurrection has just been referred to (verse
4) as 'out of dead ones'; that is, a selective
resurrection, leaving others dead. The "if"
marks the resurrection to be the prize of our calling, not
attained by all believers, but dependant
on the holiness called for by God - the contrast to the ‘continuance in sin’ of the proposal" (Govett).]
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Notes
1. Advent. What the Scriptures assert even Modernists admit. Dr.
Griffith Thomas experienced it. He
says:- " 'I remember
quite well when I was an instructor at
2. Glory. Dr. Griffith Thomas adds:- " 'That the
Lord will come in Person to this our earth: that His risen elect will
reign here with Him and judge: that during that blessed reign the power of evil
will be bound, and the glorious prophecies of peace and truth on earth find
their accomplishment - this is my firm persuasion, and not mine alone, but that
of multitudes of Christ's waiting people, as
it was that of His primitive apostolic Church, before controversy blinded the
eyes of the Fathers to the light of prophecy.' "